We’re pleased to announce that The Shadow Booth is open to fiction submissions from women writers only from 1–15 January 2019. This includes any transgender writers who identify as women, but we’d be grateful if male writers would refrain from submitting during this period. There will be another open submission period in the spring, which we will be announcing shortly.

Some basic guidelines:

• We are a bi-annual journal of weird and eerie fiction. Do not send us your Western romance (in space). Do not send us your drug addiction memoir. Do not send us your shopping list (unless you’re buying some really weird things). Weird. Eerie. Fiction. Please.
• If you want an idea of what we mean by weird and eerie, then read The Shadow Booth: Vol. 1 or Vol. 2 (or, preferably, both). This is the best way to find out what we like! The ebooks are currently only £2.99 via the Shadow Booth online store to encourage this, and like all independent publications, we need your support to keep going. Paperbacks and subscriptions are also available. If you want further pointers, why not read editor Dan Coxon’s article on the Ginger Nuts of Horror website: Face the Strange.
• Submissions should be 1,000 – 8,000 words long. We won’t quibble over a word or two, but otherwise those limits are fixed. At present we’re particularly interested in shorter stories, between 1,000 – 3,500 words, but we will consider everything.
• We are not considering reprints, but simultaneous submissions are fine as long as you inform us as soon as your story is accepted elsewhere.
• Please only submit one story during the submissions period. Any further submissions during this period will be rejected. (We would say ‘send us your best’, but you know that already…)
• Email your submission to submissions@theshadowbooth.com, with the word SUBMISSION as the first word of the Subject line. It’s also helpful if you include the story title.
• Manuscripts should be submitted as a Word file attached to the email wherever possible. We’ll do our best to read .rtf files and PDFs, but we make no promises. DO NOT paste your story into the body of the email.
• This submissions period is for Vol. 3 and Vol. 4, to be published in March and October 2019.
• The important part: The Shadow Booth is a paying market, paying 1.5p per word. That works out as £15 per 1,000 words, if it’s simpler. While payments can be made to overseas writers (and we actively encourage writers from overseas to submit), payment is simplified if you have a Paypal account.

Submissions will close at midnight on 15 January 2019.